Five Songs: A Series
by Ziggy Sternenstaub
Summary: Five character sketches of different people from the films, inspired by five different songs. Features: Anakin, Palpatine, Padme, Han and Darth Plagueis.
1. Chapter 1

So this is a little experiment I tried on Live Journal and decided to re-post here. The process is below in the music meme. Anyone who wants to is welcome to steal it. Not sure I'm terribly fond of writing like this, but the results were interesting.

1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.

2. Put iTunes or equivalent media player on random.

3. For each song that plays, write something related to the theme you picked inspired by the song. You have only the time frame of the song: no planning beforehand: you start when it starts, and no lingering afterward; once the song is over, you stop writing. (No fair skipping songs either; you have to take what comes by chance!)

4. Do 5 of these, then post.

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.

The first sketch is also very, very, very slightly slashy. If you care at all, I guess you can skip that one, though you might lose one of the catchy lines in the second sketch if you do this.

**Five Songs: A Series**

by Ziggy Sternenstaub

1.

_If loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right_

_If being right means living without you, I'd rather live wrong than right._

—If Loving You if Wrong, Barbara Mandrell

Anakin leaned back into the sheets. Not silk, not satin—something softer. Pale burgundy, but dark enough to absorb the stain if his wine glass tipped, as it had the night before. Now his hand moved through his own hair, feeling terrible, feeling favoured, feeling...spoiled and utterly fulfilled. Some part of him said that he deserved this, that he had always deserved this, that all of his life he had been waiting for the moment when Fate would turn and finally, finally...smile.

"Is this wrong?" he whispered suddenly.

"Is what wrong?" a much hoarser whisper answered.

"Enjoying this...so much."

"Oh..._Anakin_. Precious boy. You deserve this."

Anakin turned and caught a glimpse of Chancellor Palpatine's smile—blue eyed and proud. He accepted it and drained his wine glass dry.

* * *

A/N Don't take the lyric here too literally given the,er, situation. The person that Anakin loves more than being right is in fact not Palpatine, but himself.

I'm still an Ani/Palpy shipper, but one must be IC about these things: the love of Anakin's life was always Anakin.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

_It's hard to write a song with bitter fingers,_

_So much to prove, so few to tell you why..._

_No more long days hocking hunks of garbage--_

_Bitter fingers never swung on swinging stars._

--Bitter Fingers, Elton John

The document before Chancellor Palpatine swam briefly in front of his tired eyes. He sat back and rubbed at them, his impeccably manicured nails glinting in the dim lighting of the midnight office.

He looked at the data again and then tossed it away. Not even he could work every standard hour of the day, and sometimes he found himself too angry to actually continue. Sometimes the echoing voices of the past rose up in his overheated brain, calling with the lyrical, dark melodies of the thwarted, the deserted, and the dead.

_Make me proud._

Darth Plagueis has whispered it as he fell back onto his pillow, dark, thick fluid running past his hands to stain the perfectly white sheets bright, bright red.

Palpatine always had burgundy sheets now.

His fingers curled into tight fists before his eyes, closed so tightly he saw the illusion of passing stars.

He wished he could close his ears.

* * *

**A/N: **Of course the "song" Palpatine is writing is a drafting of some devious political plan to extend his illicit power. Sneaky bugger—but not half as sneaky as his dead Master, apparently.

This moment of guilt brought to you by Palpatine's Sadly Beaten, Bashed, Bloodied, Burned and Battered Conscience. Ha.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

_See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly._

_I'm crying._

--I Am the Walrus, The Beatles

Lieutenant Han Solo squinted in the bright summer sun, sighting down the line of his power rifle. Green-suited native soldiers squinted back at him in the distance, screaming defiance.

_I am not in the mood for this shit._

He pulled the trigger, watched red flame briefly overtake his sight altogether, and dove back behind the energy shield to avoid return fire.

He almost missed the falling of the body.

_I'm __**really** not in the mood for this shit._

"You got the Rebel pig!" the man next to him exclaimed victoriously.

Han was very glad he was too far away to see the dead man's staring, staring eyes.

* * *

**A/N: **A nice little slice of AU goodness (yeah, he was probably an Imperial soldier at some point, did his required five years of service or whatever, but I really, really doubt he made lieutenant in canon).

Probably the most literal interpretation of any of the lyrics here. Just to clarify, I'm definitely a Han-shot-First type of person, but I'm thinking in this instance he's feeling guilty because he's been wondering if he picked the wrong side.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

_I wanna live, I wanna give, I've been a miner for a heart of gold_

_...I've been in my mind, it's such a fine line that keeps me searching for a heart of gold_

_...and I'm gettin' old._

--Heart of Gold, Neil Young

Anakin Skywalker was like something out of a dream. Running, whooping with joy, pushing forward with wild fire in his eyes, reaching for the suns, the moons and all of the stars. Whether he was a good man, or an essentially flawed one with very good intentions was a matter of debate, but one thing could not be disputed—he was magic.

Not the magic of the Force, not the magic of entirely comprehensible, if strangely illogical Midichlorians, but something ethereal, something recondite and furious—an element like Water, like Earth, like Air, like _Fire._

Especially like Fire.

Padmé thought that it almost didn't matter if he were good, because he was still magic.

Palpatine didn't want him to be good at all.

Just magic.

_Magic._

* * *

**A/N:** Lyrics obviously taken with a heaping, helping dose of literary irony. This one is definitely my favourite of all of these ficlets.

Fire also obviously meant to take a little dig of dramatic irony at this character's future.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

_I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail, yes I would_

_If I could, I surely would._

_I'd rather be a hammer than a nail. Yes, I would._

_If I only could, I surely would._

_A man gets tied up to the ground_

_...he gives the world its saddest sound...its saddest sound..._

--El Condor Pasa (If I Could), Simon and Garfunkel

Long wisps of brown hair found their place in the wind and the Queen of Naboo glimpsed, almost shyly, at the Seer.

"What do you see?"

The Seer smiled cunningly.

"They say that power is the path of corruption—that no one can avoid being taken by the desire for more—that to let go of it is the ultimate virtue. I say...keep it, my Queen. If you stop being Queen, and leave Naboo, you will know great passion, great love—and you will die young, absorbed into a greater power than yourself. You will be devoured by a great, insatiable hunger."

The Queen's eyelids drooped over brown irises that reflected her usually steady spirit.

"And if I stay?"

"You will become the greatest Queen Naboo has ever known. You will serve our people well. You will bring us great honour. To fear this is a great sin. To fear this is _hamartia_."

The Queen left the seer, troubled. She did not want to break the tradition of democracy by taking the prolonged powers that her people wished her to accept—but the image of a great, hungry mouth full of rapacious teeth hovered before her.

Which would be the greater sin? If she should fear the unknown? If she should fear love? If she should break tradition?

_If... if...if..._

* * *

_A/N: _I cheated with this one. I continued writing after the song was finished, but it's a really short song and if I hadn't you would have been reading a completely incomprehensible, weird paragraph ending somewhere in the middle of the Seer's prediction.

Anyway, I've obviously been reading too much about Greek tragedy lately. _Hamartia_ is the "tragic flaw" of a Greek-style tragic hero in classic tragedy. Though Anakin is obviously the tragic hero in the prequels, Padmé has her own fair share of a tragic flaw, but it's not as clear as Anakin's. I was playing with this idea—that the intellectual Padmé is able to see where she might make her act of shame, her tragic error (as most tragic heroes absolutely cannot), but is unable to avoid it, because she cannot decipher which choice is more awful—to become a quasi-dictator and possibly do great good despite her own moral objections (because society asks this of her, and of course the "universe" that she is violating is the request of her people, who need her), or to cleave to her personal morality, give democracy its due, but do so partly out of fear of the unknown—and of course become Senator, go to Coruscant, become Anakin's lover and victim to his own much, much less introspective Tragic Error (also due to another series of moral errors and indecisions on her own part, of course. Even in the films, Padme is by no means a blameless party to her ultimate fate).

I'm intrigued the fact that in the "tragic universe," avoiding the fall appears to be almost impossible, because the tragic hero always believes that he is doing the right thing, when in fact he is always doing the wrong thing. Bitch of a situation.

Now that my A/N has become just as long, if not longer than the fic, I will leave you to contemplate the unthinkable.


End file.
